Some things are not negotiable and don't ever move the ancient boundary stone!

Am I Missing Something

I have always considered myself as fairly intuitive and insightful. That has often found, me more often than I like to admit, tending more in the direction of being judgmental rather than taking a believing the best posture in spite of appearances. The past 2 or 3 weeks find me being tempted in the direction of judgment rather than simply taking some recent announcements at face value.

On January 4, 2013 the Church of England announced their decision to permit gay male clergy to become bishops if they promise to remain celibate while at the same time allowing them to remain in their civil partnerships. Anglican bishop of Norwich, Graham James, was quoted as saying “The House (of Bishops) believed it would be unjust to exclude from consideration for the episcopate anyone seeking to live fully in conformity with the Church’s teaching on sexual ethics”

Additionally, this week the Boy Scouts of America suggested an announcement would most likely be forthcoming as early as February 6, 2013 indicating a change in policy to allow gay members (the scouts themselves) as well as allowing gay adult scout leaders. Partial indication of their motives was the scout honor code which includes honesty.

“Live fully in conformity with the Church’s teaching on sexual ethics” & honesty! Honestly? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest conforming to sexual ethics and honesty have little to do with these announcements or at least not in the way you and I might think.

I don’t believe I will go as far as to conduct a poll, but does the Church of England really expect us to believe that the partners in a gay civil partnership will actually cease sexual contact while continuing in the relationship simply because one of them got a promotion? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to allowing a Bishop to continue to live at his nudist colony as long as he stops looking? Or believing all those people who say they buy Playboy for the great articles. This appears to be nothing less than the Church of England bowing to pop culture, political correctness and the disproportionate influence the gay lobby carries in society.

And on the subject of gay men and young boys (regardless of orientation), there is not a good track record for gay adults being able keep their hands to themselves. We have way too many examples of spiritual leaders (yes the church must and hopefully has taken responsibility for many abuses in this area) abusing their position of leadership by taking advantage of impressionable young boys. It is disingenuous for them to try and get us to think that things will be any different in the Boy Scouts just because they are committed to honesty and other attributes of character. Add to the adult gay men impressionable young gay boys and you have a recipe for disaster. And, being the chronic skeptic I am, I believe this recipe is nothing less than by design. No self-respecting leader would put two volatile elements together in the same setting (gay adult leaders and young gay boys) and ignore any thought that anything but the obvious and inevitable would happen.

In similar fashion, there are other leaders out there who want us to believe that outlawing certain guns will be some form of insurance to keep them out of the hands criminals. This kind of thinking is no different than to suggest that if we were to have a law on the books prohibiting all of society from robbing banks that it would have any effect at all on those planning to rob banks already.